Choosing the password is only the first step; you have got to remember it. You can not remember 100s of password at a time. However, with the help of a password manager, you can organize passwords, host names, and PIN codes.

Like most of you, I love using Firefox and explaining the advantages of Firefox to others who use other browsers. Unlike other browsers, Firefox has huge list of excellent add-ons that will satisfy almost all of your requirements in using a browser. Following are the list of 7 powerful Firefox password related add-ons that will make your life in managing passwords very safe, secure and easy under Mac OS X, Linux / UNIX and Windows operating system.

Too many passwords to remember? Do you forget passwords? Do you keep passwords written down? Writing down password is a bad idea. I cannot remember more than a handful of passwords. So what is the solution to password?

Use personal password manager to store all passwords in a securely encrypted file. This file is protected by a single master password. At the end of day you need to remember only one password. Here is list of free and open source software:

Password Safe – Password Safe is an Open Source (free) tool that allows you to have a different password for all the different programs and websites. It only works on Microsoft Windows.

KeePass – The free, open-source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager that runs on Microsoft Windows. AES and Twofish are most secure encryption algorithms currently known and used in this software. Only drawback – does not runs on Linux or Mac OS X. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux

Password Gorilla – A Tcl/TK PasswordSafe clone that runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and most flavors of Unix, including Linux and Solaris (note that it requires Tcl/TK to run).

pwsafe – It is a unix commandline program that manages encrypted password databases. Good for remote access over ssh.

gpass for Gnome

GPass is a simple GNOME application, released under the GNU GPL licence, that lets you manage a collection of passwords. The password collection is stored in an encrypted file, protected by a master-password.

Use apt-get command to install gpass:$ sudo apt-get install gpass

Make sure you backup ~/.gpass directory.

revelation – GNOME2 Password manager

pwmanager – Password Manager for KDE

With PwManager you can easily manage your passwords. PwManager saves your passwords blowfish-encrypted in one file, so you have to remember only one master-password instead of all. Instead of the master-password you can use a chipcard, so you donâ€™t have to remember a password to access the list. To install pwmanager for KDE type:$ sudo apt-get install kde-pwmanager Start pwmanager from K menu or type:$ pwmanager &

Password Gorilla

My personal favorite is Password Gorilla as it can be used to store any logins and passwords. Retrieve them by either sending them to the Clipboard.

Password Gorilla installation

Download it from http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/Gorilla/download/gorilla-1.3.zip

You will get a dial box asking password and database name. Since this is first run, you need to cancel dialog box. Click on menu File > New to create a new database and a password, If you lost master password there is no way you can get back your login information. So keep password database file at safe place.